To find the roots of Anglicanism, one must go back to the height of the
Roman Empire. At that time, the church was united under Patriarchs and
Bishops who were in direct succession to the original twelve Apostles. As
early as the fourth century, there are records of Bishops in the remote
corner of the Empire called Britannia and, sometime during the third
century, St Alban became known as a British martyr.

When the Roman Empire yielded to the Germanic tribes, the Romans abandoned
Britannia. The Christians there were largely forgotten by the rest of the
Empire, but the Celtic Christians in Whales, Ireland, and Cornwall continued
to flourish and develop their own distinctive customs. Soon, they emerged to
convert the Scots and Germanic tribes that had invaded England. Ss. Aiden,
Cuthbert, and Hilda (and others) left behind a vibrant, British Church.

In 597AD, St Augustine of Canterbury was sent to England to restore contact
between the British Church and The Church of Rome. He established his See at
Canterbury and in time not only converted the Anglo-Saxons of Southern
England but he also brought the Celtic Christians under the authority of the
Pope. Under the Anglo-Saxons, the English church produced artistic marvels,
moving religious poetry, and The Ecclesiastical History of St. Bede. Also,
remaining true to its Celtic roots, the English church retained a distinct
character.

Then in 1066, William the Conqueror defeated the Anglo-Saxons at Hastings
and took the English crown for himself. He replaced the Anglo-Saxon clergy
and bishop with those from his own country, Normandy, which brought the
Church of England more into line with the rest of the Western Church. The
first great theologian of this Anglo-Norman church was St. Anselm, the
Archbishop of Canterbury. A later successor of his, Thomas Becket, was
murdered at the foot of the alter for refusing to submit the church to the
crown.

During the middle ages, the Church of England spread into every aspect of
daily life. Thousands of poor priests ministered to the needs of peasants,
merchants, and nobles alike while monks and nuns dedicated their lives to
God. Beautiful cathedrals, like Lincoln, Salisbury, and York Minister, were
built in the major cities. Monks, who valued knowledge and learning, founded
the now-famous universities at Oxford and Cambridge.

Despite all this, the medieval English Church had grown corrupt and many
began to press for reforms. Capitalizing on this feeling, King Henry VIII
challenged the authority of the Papacy within Britain. A formal break with
Rome came in the sixteenth century when the House of Parliament passed an
Act of Supremacy declaring Henry VIII to be the “supreme governor” of the
Church of England. For the first time since the sixth century, the Church of
England was not under the authority of the Pope.

After a brief return to Rome under Queen Mary in 1553, the Church of England
began the long process of reformation. Using Scripture and the teachings of
the early undivided Church as guides. the English Church retained bishops,
sacraments, ceremony, and vestments, while dispensing with indulgences,
enforcing celibacy of clergy, and Latin services. The King James Authorized
Version of the Bible and The Book of Common Prayer made Scripture and
worship comprehensible to all people, high and low.

The settlers who founded Jamestown, Virginia were members of the Church of
England. Later, Church of England parishes would be found throughout the
thirteen colonies, especially in Virginia, Maryland, and New York. When the
colonies gained independence after the Revolutionary war, those churches
came together to form the Protestant Episcopal Church of the United States
of America: “Protestant” as opposed to “Roman”; “Episcopal” as opposed to
“Congregational.” After the consecration of their first bishops by bishops
in England and Scotland, the Episcopal Church flourished for over a hundred
fifty years. Many of our nation’s presidents –such as George Washington,
James Madison, and Franklin Roosevelt-were Episcopalians.

Sadly, starting in the 1960’s, the Episcopal Church, like many other
mainline churches, became more concerned with social agendas than with the
Gospel. Our jurisdiction was formed in 1968 to preserve the old, established
ways of Anglicanism. Our faith remains in solidarity with the Celtic and
Anglo-Saxon Christians, the saints of the Middle Ages, the first Anglican
reformers and all traditional Anglicans and Episcopalians throughout the
world.

We believe the holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testament to be the
Word of God and to contain all things necessary unto salvation. As God's
revealed word to us, the Bible is the lens through which we view and
evaluate all other claims to the truth. We believe also that Scripture
infallibly reveals God and his ways to us.

The problem the church has to tackle, however, is how to best interpret
Scripture. It is one thing to say this picture offers truth without error
and another to say that we can interpret Scripture without error. Roman
Catholicism holds that the Magesterium and the Papacy can infallibly protect
Orthodox teaching. Many Protestants take either a more academic route
relying on the studies of the scholars or else believe that the Holy Ghost
will ensure that individuals will correctly interpret Scripture. In
opposition to Roman Catholicism, Anglicanism holds that because we are
human, there is always the potential for misinterpretation; therefore, the
church must always remain open to self correction. As do the Protestants,
Anglicans feel free to use modern biblical scholarship, but Anglicanism
first seeks to determine how the church has universally interpreted
Scripture.

Traditional Anglicans keep in mind that the Holy Scripture arose from and
was inspired through a worshiping community-the church. The Old Testament
was written and used by those who worship the one, true, God, and the New
Testament was written and used by those who had been saved by Christ and who
worship God-the Father, Son, and the Holy Ghost. The Bible was not
discovered and then incorporated by the church but rather was born within
her. Even modern biblical criticism has supported these assertions through
its demonstration that the Gospels were written, within and for, a
community. For example, St. Paul, "a slave of Jesus Christ," was explaining
the faith to worshiping communities and addressing particular concerns. In
other words, Scripture was not written in a vacuum, but contains the very
"stuff" of the church. For this reason, Scripture should always be studied
reverently and prayerfully and with the guidance of the church.

Just as Scripture was not written in a vacuum, it is not to be read in a
vacuum. Anglicans believe that Scripture is to be read with the aid of a
holy tradition. Tradition is the living experience of the Church found
primarily in the writings of the early, undivided Church, and those men and
women who witnessed the faith to their several generations. A priest or a
bishop never teaches his own opinions but rather the universal and ancient
understanding of the Scripture. In this way, Scripture joins us not only to
God but also to the countless Christians who have gone before us.

Because we are so attached to the world immediately around us, Christians
can all too easily focus on the present-day church. This is referred to as
"horizontal" thinking, or picturing the church only as spread out
geographically. We must remember that the church spans time, that she
includes those who have gone before us in time and those who will come
after. This is what "Catholic" really means: the church spread throughout
the entire world and all the ages. In this way the church is truly
universal.

Anglicans, like the Roman Catholics and the Eastern Orthodox, strive to
remain faithful to the teachings of the church in all places and at all
times. These teachings are important for two reasons. First, they establish
a standard by which the present-day church compares and reforms herself;
interpretations of Scripture and controversial issues can be tested to see
if they are in conflict with the "faith once delivered." Second, particular
cultures, generations, or societies are prevented from permanently
corrupting the teachings of the faith with their own ideas. This is
particularly important in this age with its optimistic view of human reason.

For example, very often someone will decide that his teachings or his
practices are better. An Anglican can respond that we, as individuals,
really can't know what's better or worse. But we can know if the teaching or
practice dates back to the earliest times of the church and if it was
acceptable then. Many Protestants will argue that extemporaneous (not
written) worship is better than liturgical. What we know as a fact is that
Jesus used liturgical prayers and that the church, from the earliest times,
had a liturgical, or written, form of worship, and before that there were
memorized forms of worship.

With Anglicanism, there are several documents or bodies of works that are
used to keep the church faithful to the Catholic faith. First and foremost,
of course, is Holy Scripture itself. But lest we interpret Scripture
individually or culturally, we read Scripture with the aid of the Apostles,
Nicene, and Athanasian Creeds. These creeds (from the Latin credo, meaning I
believe), and especially the Nicene Creed, are the church's statement about
what Scripture teaches us about the Trinity and the essentials of the faith.
Second, Anglicanism abides by the decisions of the first four Ecumenical
councils (whose rulings are considered incontrovertible) and likely all
seven Ecumenical Councils of the undivided Church. Anglicanism strives to
remain faithful to the orthodox fathers of the church. Finally, Anglicans
make use of medieval, Reformation, and even modern theologians whose
teachings are harmonious with Scripture, the Creeds, and the early church
fathers. Within Anglicanism, The Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion, as found
in our prayer book, is one example of such teachings.

Much of our distinctiveness was hammered out during the English
Reformation of the 16th century. We hesitate to use the word "Protestant,"
because it has lost its original meaning, and it is associated with over 200
groups who have repudiated much of the Catholic tradition. Perhaps the
easiest way to remember the difference between the English Reformation and
the continental European Reformation is that Anglicans did not "throw the
baby out with the bathwater." The English reformers themselves refer to the
work as 'we gained by not plowing under an overgrown field'.

One of the major ways in which the English Reformation differed from that on
the European mainlands, is that simple Scripture and the early churches were
used as guides. Lutherans and Calvinists believed in the doctrine Sola
Scriptura (meaning Scripture alone), which is the belief that the Scripture
by itself was and is sufficient guide to the faith and practice. Anglicans
took a more moderate approach, stating that the church cannot teach anything
as necessary to salvation which cannot be proven in Holy Scripture (see
Article V), but had the right to form her own liturgies, customs, and
practices. Anglicanism held that any practice or interpretation of Scripture
maintained since the earliest times of the Church, was sound and wholesome.

Thus, Catholic essentials such as the creeds, sacraments, and Episcopacy
were retained by the Church of England. However, as the Bible and the
liturgies were translated into the vernacular, sermons were given a more
prominent role, the laity were given a larger part in worship, and devotions
to the saints were severely curtailed. For these reasons, Anglicans are at
times referred to, paradoxically, as "reformed Catholics.

Anglicans believe the Creation consists of two realities-that the solid,
true reality is the spiritual world and that we live in another reality that
is but a shadow of that true reality. What we sense all around us- the blue
sky, the cold rock, and the colorful flower-is only a tiny hint of all that
is. To say that only the physical world exists would be like an Islander
saying that only dry land exists and that the whole wide ocean is imaginary.
There is a spiritual part of creation, too.

Not the entire spiritual world is outside our daily experience; we ourselves
are hybrids or half breeds: part spiritual, part physical. We exist both
spiritually and physically. If, as mentioned above, the physical world is
like a dry island and the spiritual world like the ocean, then we are mud!
Take away our bodies and we are spirit; take away our spirit and we are
dust. Because we are hybrids, God feeds both parts of us. If He had given us
only physical food, our souls would have been left to starve. And as we are
not angels, our diet can't be entirely spiritual. God feeds us with the
sacraments, for they, like us, are hybrids. In the words of our tradition,
they are "outward and visible signs of an inward and spiritual grace." They
exist in both realities. That means, like us, they share in the greater
spiritual reality. Anglicans believe that two sacraments, Baptism and Holy
Eucharist, were unquestionably ordained by Jesus Christ as necessary for
salvation. Most Anglicans also believe that confirmation, Holy Matrimony,
Holy Orders, Holy Unction, and absolution are also sacramental.

The sacraments remind us who and where we are at all major occasions of
life. We are born, we are baptized. As children or adolescents, we are
confirmed. Many of us, as adults, are married. When we are sick, we are
given Holy Unction. When sorry for our sins, we are given absolution. And of
course, throughout life, we are nursed by the Holy Eucharist. Thus, the
whole life of an Anglican is surrounded by the grace given by the sacraments
and those sacraments are administered by those who have received the
sacrament of Holy Orders.

God gives us His grace through the sacraments. The full prayer book
definition of a sacrament is as follows: an outward and visible sign of an
inward and spiritual grace given unto us; ordained by Christ himself, as
means whereby we receive His grace, and as a pledge to assure us thereof. In
other words, we are assured by Christ himself that when we are baptized,
when we receive the Eucharist, when we are absolved by a priest, something
really and truly happens; we actually receive God's grace. At other times in
our lives, when we pray alone, help someone out, successfully resist
temptation, we may hope that we receive grace. But we can't be certain and
that uncertainty is undone in the reception of the sacraments. While our
minds and bodies may not register or comprehend that grace has been given
and received, our souls do and benefit from it.

Evangelical is one of those words that have come to have a new meaning than
it was originally intended. Today, "evangelical" often means a type of
Christian who focuses on the exposition is richer in sermons, considers
itself to be "saved," and who often most employees and informal and
contemporary style of worship. Quote evangelical," however, comes from the
Greek word meaning good news or gospel. An evangelist was originally someone
who tried to spread "good news" of the death and resurrection of Jesus
Christ to the world.

Anglicans believe that the Church is both sacramental and evangelical.
Indeed, both are really flip sides of the same coin. Our Lord commanded his
apostles to go out unto all nations begin parentheses literally, peoples and
parentheses, baptizing in the name of the father, the son, and the Holy
Ghost. Going out onto all nations is evangelical, and baptizing is
sacramental. For this reason, Christianity is meant to be a proselytizing
faith that strives to win all people to Christ. Anglicans have normally been
at the forefront of a missionary work in the world, so much so that today
more Anglicans reside in Africa and Asia than in Great Britain and America.

St. Peter called Christians ambassadors, and like ambassadors, Anglicans
strive to represent their homeland, heaven, to the world around them by
ministering to those in need, uplifting the downtrodden, easing other
people's burdens, and striving to live a godly life. Anglicans believe that
the best way to spread the faith is by loving others unconditionally and
selflessly as Christ did.

Both converting souls and feeding them are equally important. Over time, the
church is stayed too far any and evangelical direction or too far in the
sacramental direction. A church that is sacramental and Outlook, without
being evangelical, can become cultic tick, introspective, and cold. On the
other hand, a church that is evangelical without being sacramental can
become too caught up in the here and now, forgetful of the spiritual life,
cut off from important means of grace, and overly focused on a particular
minister or pastor. To use an analogy, if the church is a hospital, the
first group is so focused on the patients in the hospital that they forget
the sick outside, while the latter group is so focused on advertising the
hospital that they forget to give patients medicine upon admission.

It is when the two sides, sacramental, and evangelical, are held together
that the Church thrives. The church that goes out into the world, converts
others, and feeds them by the sacraments is a church aglow with the Holy
Spirit. This is what is meant by being evangelical.

Modern scholarship that shown that at the earliest times of the church, the
clergy consisted of Bishops (or elders), and deacons. The bishops were
responsible for governing the church and celebrating the Eucharist. They
were assisted in the services and administration by deacons. The first
Bishops were the apostles themselves.

St. Clement of Rome, writing around 90 A.D., states in a letter that, as the
apostles faced death, successors were appointed on whom they laid hands.
Shortly thereafter, we know several important bishops such as St. Ignatius
of Antioch. In his letters, written as he was being taken to Rome to be fed
to the lions, St. Ignatius teaches various churches the essentials of the
faith. Over and over again, he talks about the central role of Bishops and
the church to serve as unifying symbols. In short, the church was united
through bishops to the original apostles. This is what we call apostolic
succession. Our bishops today can trace their succession through the laying
on of hands all the way back to the original Apostles.

As a church expanded, bishops could no longer handle a whole bulk of
services, and so junior partners called presbyters served as the bishop's
representative within the parish while the bishop himself governed a
diocese. In the West, the press biter was called by a Latin name, sacerdos,
which in English is priest. Thus, today we have a church with deacons,
priests, and bishops.

The bishop remains a central figure here it without him; neither a priest or
deacon is permitted to function. This is why a diocesan bishop is often
referred to as the ordinary. He is the ordinary, meaning normal, minister of
the church. A priest is the extraordinary, or the stand-in for the bishop.
This is why most parishes have a bishop's chair. It symbolizes the presence
of the bishop. This echoes a custom of the early church, when a priest or
press biter would have to go to his bishop to receive the consecrated bread
and wine to take back to his parish for Eucharist.

At the Reformation, everyone living in England and Wales belonged to a
parish church. If one lives within a parish's borders, once baptized, one
was a member. Unlike the latter congregations, the parish church applied no
ideological litmus test, other than baptism, for the laity. The parish was
not meant to be a place where only like-minded people gathered.

This idea of a church that comprehended a wide range of beliefs was not
compromised in the modern sense of the word. The nation was made up of
communities and these basic communities, the parishes of the land, were the
bricks and mortar of Christian England. But people differed in belief.
Therefore the comprehensive church provided latitude. Unlike the continental
Reformation, the English Reformation was born on campus and kept alive by
professors who believed in education. They were the new generation of
scholars to whom the widening variety of knowledge was now available through
printed books. They believed that if people were educated by the rote
recitation of common prayer and by reading the Scriptures in a manner that
tied the text to the Christian year, they would grow in faith and be good
subjects of the crown. If Roman Catholicism was a sacerdotal religion, and
Puritanism a moralistic religion, Anglicanism was an educational religion.

To this day, Anglicanism holds that it has a geographical mission to all
people no matter their ideology, race, ethnicity, sex, or even their state
in life. The church building sanctifies place as its bells sanctifies time.
The parish priest is to minister to all who accept baptism and who will use
the Prayer Book, and even to those who won't.

Each Sunday Anglicans find themselves perched in their pew next to others
whose views and conduct may well differ from their own, and who have all
sorts of virtues and vices, good intentions and unworthy motives. If human
frailty offends one, the parish is the place to avoid! To put it another
way, Anglicans believe that the church is a school for sinners, not a place
for saints. Our policy invites us to participate in an inclusive faith.

The parish remains a powerful illustration of New Testament Christianity.
Sunday by Sunday we meet together. We hear the Bible read to us. We hear
Bible-close sermons. If our hearts are not hardened, we hear our besetting
sins and weaknesses described. Perhaps we feel guilty. Perhaps we feel angry
because we feel guilty. And if we listen with grace, we may discover
something about the basis of Christianity. Kneeling next to us are other
human beings. They struggle with the process of living. They feel drawn to
be in the pew. We may like these people or we may dislike them. We may
praise them or gossip about them. We may delight in their understanding of
the faith or they may horrify us.

Yet, at every Eucharist, the moment will come when, side-by-side, through
bread and wine, the living Lord touches us and for a moment allows us to
tread the courts of heaven with angels, archangels, and all the company of
heaven. For as St. Paul puts it, the guilt we feel when the word exposes our
sins and follies is the teacher who brings us to the Christ. He fills us
corporately in Word and Sacrament.

Our worship and life draw from the rich treasure of the Judeo-Christian
experience. In structural terms, our worship has changed little since the
first centuries of the church. Our Book of Common Prayer (1928 edition)
contains the Catholic treasure of corporate worship and enables us to use it
every time we gather together for praise and prayer. Catholic balance of
Sacrament and Word in our worship is evidenced by our frequent celebrations
of the Holy Eucharist and our emphasis on biblical preaching. Furthermore,
over 70% of the sentences and phrases in the prayer book either directly
quote or closely paraphrase the Bible, so that we not only learn
scripturally, but also pray scripturally. In short, our words become like
God's Word. The rich inheritance of the Christian year with its seasons of
Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, pre-Lent, Lent, Passion tide, Easter,
Ascension, Pentecost, Trinity, and centuries of sacred music make the year
alive with a Christ centered liturgy, shared by all the faithful.

Anglican worship is quietly reverent and dignified. Our human uniformity of
worship, while allowing for some variations from place to place, serves to
remind us of the universal nature of the faith. In our liturgy we are united
with past, present, and future generations of Christians. Such worship is
carried out with a view to the glorification of God, not for our
entertainment. Anglicans are not spectators but participants in liturgical
worship. Not only do we offer ourselves in words but also in gesture. We
usually kneel to pray, stand to praise, and sit for instruction. Other
optional devotional gestures, such as the sign of the cross, genuflecting,
etc., show that we worship not only mentally and spiritually, but physically
as well. To Anglicans, worship is the most important thing we do in life,
and, ultimately, this attitude characterizes our moral behavior as well, for
we believe that we must do all things as doing them unto God.

It is for the same reason that Anglicans stand against one of the great
fallacies of this age: egoism. Anglicans come together and worship not so
much to gain from the experience as to make a sacrifice of themselves.
Anglicans offer their selves, their souls and bodies, to be a reasonable,
holy, and living sacrifice unto God. So often, one hears someone speak about
"getting something out of the service." Anglicans believe that, thanks to
God's love and mercy, we do "get something out of the service" namely,
Grace, but that is of secondary importance. Worship is all about giving
oneself to God.

St. Paul tells us that we are to hand on to our heirs the unchanged faith
that was handed down to us. We believe that the faith that Christ revealed
to us and which we find in Holy Scripture is a faith that does not change
with the times. It is truth, and as such, depends on the author of all
truth, Christ, and not on the whims and fancies of human societies. And just
as it was a truth sufficient for the apostles of the first century,
sufficient for the Christian martyrs during the Roman persecutions,
sufficient for the Christian who over the centuries have faced wars, famine,
pestilence, and tyranny, so is sufficient for us today. In a simple,
Biblical phrase, to be an Anglican means to be "in the world, but not of
it."